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Annex
Smart collaboration platform for semi-formal communications in a professional environment to boost work productivity.
Team : Personal Project
My Role : Research (Primary and Secondary), Conceptualization and Ideation, User Interface Design, Prototyping, Visualization and Infographics, Customer Journey Mapping, Usability Testing, Narrative and Documentation
Time Frame : February 2022 (15 days)
Project Type : Design Sprint, UIUX Design
3.
UIUX Design
"The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team."
– Phil Jackson
I did this project as part of the Microsoft Design Challenge 2022 to work under a high pressure environment with a time crunch.
From the 4 main fields : Collaboration, Security, Well-being & Learning, I chose to work on a collaboration based platform for professional environments as I related the most with it due to a lot of my education taking place online because of covid which resulted in me missing out on communicating and collaborating with my peers effectively.
Collaboration
Understanding the Theme of the Competition
The whole world is adopting a hybrid setup for work and education, things are no longer at the status quo and might never go to the previous paradigm ever because of the obvious benefits and flexibility of the new setup. People are no longer drastically affected in their personal life due to work, as daily commuting becomes optional, relocating becomes even more circumstantial and flexible and focus has shifted from work time to work efficiency. I attempted to understand how the hybrid setup is being implemented and which particular area could I target to make the implementation process smoother.
“Considering the hybrid transition, make a tool for seamless communication and increased efficiency for a target set of people to create a meaningful impact in their workflows”
Hybrid model is being implemented in 2 major ways:
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Attend physically occasionally with the whole team while staying connected remotely the rest of the time
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A permanent remote workforce to increase the organisation’s reach while continuing offline with people who live in the area
It is clear that shifting to a hybrid mode has both negative and positive impacts on different people and is true for most of the industries. On diving deep into this area, I found that the factors that stand out in a hybrid mode are work efficiency, irregular work hours and reduced interactions.
Factors affecting work environment
80% of the time internal communication comes out as an area to improve the work environment of an organization.
There are several things that we should consider, for instance, whether the employees are informed of all the projects that are carried out, whether the intranet of the organization is used effectively, how internal meetings are held, the adequacy of email management, interdepartmental communication, and a long etcetera.
Today, working hours are starting to be as important as salaries. They should be flexible, adaptive to employees needs and regulate the level of presenteeism.
Focusing on the Hybrid Model
As the hybrid model is new and in its nascent stages, it would be easier to to bring changes in work culture that consider employees working both physically and remotely.
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Unconscious Proximity Bias
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Seamless Connectivity
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Diluted Work-culture
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Focus on output & Efficiency
instead of strict time
Factors relevant to a Hybrid Workforce
On interviewing people, conducting sureveys and doing online research, some factors were identified which were being globally identified and worked upon irrespective of the departements and work in most cases. These are the factors that should be implemented or considered in a hybrid system, the corollary being that it should also reflect the same changes on the collaboration platform.
On interviewing people, conducting sureveys and doing online research, some factors were identified which were being globally identified and worked upon irrespective of the departements and work in most cases. These are the factors that should be implemented or considered in a hybrid system, the corollary being that it should also reflect the same changes on the collaboration platform.
Factors relevant to a Hybrid Workforce
Factors relevant to a Hybrid Workforce
Factors relevant to a Hybrid Workforce
Factors relevant to a Hybrid Workforce
Unconscious Proximity Bias - Sometimes work is not recognised and connection that are formed are not that strong simply because of no physical interaction. Offline workers might have an advantage because of this.
Seamless Connectivity - Communications between teams should be fast, simple and efficient without the need of scheduling every time.
Diluted Workculture - Every company has a vision and culture according to which they work and treat their employees. Though a lot a major part of this culture is related to communication, it also depends on several physical & emotional elements like the sense of belonging to a comapany and the workspace.
Focus on Output instead of Time - In a hybrid workforce, all the employees may not be in the same timezone, or have simmilar schedules at home, which is why the institution should be flexible about the starting and ending work times(when there are no meeting to attend), by allowing the employees to start work according to their convinience and capping the maximum work hours in day or week.
Semi-Formal Communications
Semi-Formal and Informal communications are one of the key factors that contribute to a workculture, where employees can interact and get to know each other for more than what they do and form good bonds. Studies also say that this improves work efficiency greatly.
Semi-formal communications are one thing that have been greatly affected because of shifting to a hybrid method of working.
What products are currently out there?
What products are currently out there?
What products are currently out there?
What products are currently out there?
By studying 8 platforms which are majorly used for collaboration & communication among the working & gaming communities, I found the major functions & features that they have to offer and how these functions affect particular situations and conversations.
Some key functions identified across the platforms :
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Voice Chat
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Team management features
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Categorising discussions
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Personal & group chats
One thing noticed across all platforms was that they were not flexible enough to mold to needs of different work types and departments. They were a one for all solution but had a rigid structure.
Insights from professionals working in the Industry
The key insights were noted and their relative importance was gauged on the basis of the feedback of 15 diverse participants. Different research techniques like concurrent and retrospective probing were utilized to get trustworthy data and insights. Contextual inqury was conducted to understand the users thoroughly, their work, work patterns, restrictions, etc.
. . .
Overlay based intranet collaboration platform for organisations promoting Semi-Formal communications
Annex
Overlay based UI
Press ctrl + J
It is an overlay based collaboration platform which contains various functions in form of widgets that can be easily moved and placed.
Flexible
Customisable
Widgets & Plug-ins
The use of floating widgets gives the UI its scalability as it can be easily customised to fit a wide range of work applications.
The use of plug-ins drastically improves the navigation and usability of the platform.
Quick communication channels
Channels could be created for discussions on specific topics to keep conversation segregated, organised and navigation throughout them easy. These channels will have voice channels to have instant conversations on those topics.
Important convos can be marked or converted into threads.
Organisation Intranet
A study shows that when the employees know what’s happening in the company, they feel more connected to the organisation and thus perform better. The company wall could be a good place to communicate with the employees a bit informally to announce news, achievements, employees of the month, stories related to the organisation’s vision, etc.
Shape it according to your Brand!
Due to using third party apps and platforms, an employee might start missing out on the sense of belonging to an prestigious organisation which he joined because of his/her hardwork.
The organisation could brand the Annex with their own branding and customise it however they want to create an exclusive workspace.
They could also customise the names of widgets and functions to maintain their story, theme and work culture.
Conversations to Actions
This could convert conversations into faster actions, as would happen in a conventional offline setup.
Leads to faster inter-organisation communication, announcements, surveys, etc.
Important announcements and mentions pop up on the screen while working.
Easy collaboration across all devices
Not every conversation requires a meet.
Not every conversation is formal
Experience the platform yourself, click the image to interact with the prototype
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